


Michael's Moods

by Roadsterguy



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Demons, Gen, Multi, Self-Doubt, Self-Esteem Issues, Seven Deadly Sins, Workplace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:27:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21835159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadsterguy/pseuds/Roadsterguy
Summary: A series of vignettes of Michael over time.
Relationships: Chidi Anagonye/Eleanor Shellstrop, Eleanor Shellstrop/Trevor (The Good Place), Janet (The Good Place)/Eleanor Shellstrop, Jianyu Li | Jason Mendoza & Eleanor Shellstrop, Tahani Al-Jamil/Eleanor Shellstrop
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [firelord65](https://archiveofourown.org/users/firelord65/gifts).



Hey, Michael!”

The nasal voice was right next to his ear, and the suddenness made Michael jump, his pencil skidding over the paper, leaving a thick, black, drunken line. He sighed, ripping off the ruined diagram to reveal a fresh sheet. Yes, Trevor had made him mess up, so he'd have to start over, and yes, _technically_ that was evil, but it was so _limited_. So cheap. Just a moment, not… not a real, sustained legacy of abiding evil. “What?” he asked, testily.

“Oooh,” Trevor pursed his lips, his face an exaggerated caricature of interest, “look at you, _working_ like that. So…” he leaned close, “so un- _sloth_ -like of you. Why,” he jumped back, eyes wide, “are you being _good_?”

Michael leaned back, loosening his tie. “Not in the least, Trevor. Yes, I’m being industrious, _but_ ” he held up a cautionary finger, “I’m being industrious in the service of evil, which is turning a good inclination to bad, which is doubly evil! You know what Lucifer always says – good is the root of all evil…”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s a load of bullshit. I’m way more evil than you,” Trevor grinned with such effortless slimy evil in his visage, Michael briefly turned green, “and I don’t bother with _any_ good.”

“In the short term,” Michael grumbled.

“It’s only been ten thousand years, I know, but I really think I have a hell of an edge on you, Mikey!” Trevor clapped his hand on Michael’s back with annoying faux familiarity. “I’ve got all the major ones in spades - gluttony, greed, anger, pride, envy, sloth, lust… oh! Lust!” He stepped back, snapping his fingers. “Bad Janet!”

A bad Janet poofed into smelly existence next to him, twirling her hair, aggressively looking at her phone instead of him. “What?” she asked, bored.

“My lust is slacking off!” he growled, miming a pelvic thrust. “Give me something to _bang_!!”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. Let me summon your mom, right in the middle of her period.” They both popped out of being there, surely into being somewhere else. At least somewhere that Michael didn’t have to pay attention to them.

It wasn’t the Deadlies that annoyed Michael so much about Trevor. Michael had them all, he knew. Greed, yes, for promotion and advancement. Anger that he struggled so much with it. Pride in his vision, envy that others advanced so effortlessly, his frustration at his work leading him to interesting forms of counterproductive sloth. Lust, of course, even if he could never figure out what to _do_ with it. He was set, there. No, what Trevor had was a _presence_. Everyone knew when he was there, turned towards him when he entered the room, listened to whatever idiot twaddle he had to spout. While Michael was, in a lot of ways, invisible. Even in his true form.

Well. Not once he had his vision enacted. They’d all take notice of him then!

He bent back to work.


	2. Chapter 2

"Tomorrow at noon. I’ll give you a heads up through the black cube. Got it, you slimy ingrate?”

“Oh, you old so and so.” Trevor chucked Michael in the chest with his knuckles. "Of course!" The junior demon stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked around at this little slice of neighborhood, his nose wrinkling as he took in the blue sky, the puffy clouds, the pleasant little pet-washing shops. “This is just all so stupidly complicated. I don’t _get_ it, man. Just bust out with your true form – a skyscraper-sized fire demon puts the fear of _something_ into ‘em, dunnit?” He leaned close. “Bet they’ll all mess their pants.”

“No, no, that’s the whole point!” Michael waved his arms in what he was sure was a human-like gesture of enthusiasm. “A year, maybe a hundred years of abject terror? Then it all just turns,” Michael sighed, “so _samey_.” Just like it would be with Trevor, wouldn’t it, if Michael had a go at him. A little distress and pain, but just on the wrong _scale_. It was all so physical, and so removed – nothing close to the mental torment that would bring down the tallest and mightiest, the eternal penis-bees of one’s soul that stung Michael when he thought of others’ easy successes, their casual disdain for him. Torture that persisted over hundreds of thousands of years without lessening. “I want to germinate a seed that will blossom into a poisonous plant that will last a million years!”

Trevor yawned. “Whatever, nerd. See you tomorrow.” He flipped Michael off as he sauntered off towards the train station.

Michael frowned and leaned against the wall of the train station, the stone warm and comforting. It was so easy for the other demons, it seemed. Sometimes, he envied them. Such simple delights, simple pleasures – forcing scorpions up anuses, putting screwdrivers into eye sockets, gleefully pouring cauldrons of cockroaches onto screaming souls, followed by an aperitif of boiling oil. They never thought beyond the moment, relishing torture for the simple formula of stimulus and immediate response.

But Michael didn’t have that. He kept wondering about what was next, and what was next, and what was _next_ … and yes, the secret of _true_ torture, the sort of deep, stabbing soul-torture of a _smallness_ that would strike to the heart of even the most massive of fire-demons.

He had to understand it. He had to learn to _inflict_ it. Only then could he truly have revenge on the Trevors and Shellstrops of the universe.


	3. Chapter 3

The alley outside of the Applebee’s was about as close to the Bad Place as Earth ever got. It was, actually, one of those places where the Bad Place and Earth rubbed so close together that you could catch a glimpse of one from the other. It allowed Trevor’s true nature to shine through his douchey form – that true, _deep_ douchebaggery that would suck the soul out of a human, were one to see it. But Michael wasn’t a human. He drew himself upright. “I trust I’ve been perfectly clear!”

Trevor waved his hand, yawning. “Blah blah blah. Eleanor is just as much of doucheweasel as I am. She’s never going to be _redeemed_ , you knob. But it’s super fun to watch you try, you dried smegma pile. Oh, just one more thing.” Trevor gave that slimy little smile that he always managed to just _nail_. So what if Michael’s idea of what he wanted had changed – he still admired that effortless exceptionalism. “Eleanor and I went to pound-town!” Trevor balled his hands into fists, thrusting his pelvis.

“So?” Michael frowned. “Sex isn’t an automatic ticket to the Bad Place…” That had been quite the demonic coup, making the humans focus on the movements of genitals against each other rather than unkindness and genocide.

“So what? I just wanted to let you know that you’re the only person in the neighborhood who hasn’t banged her, over the incarnations.” Trevor made the finger-into-finger-circle gesture. Michael was not as up on the mechanics of sex as the demons who were more physically oriented, but he had a feeling that more than just fingers were involved. “I have, Chidi has, Jason has, Tahani has, Mindy, even,” he shook his head, “Janet, in reboot 214, and don’t ask me how Eleanor managed _that_ one. You’re the only virgin in that place, baby! Do you think,” he leaned in, sneering, “that makes _you_ belong in the Good Place? It doesn’t, _loser_ , it just means you’re a lousy demon.”

“Well.” Michael drew himself upright. Elanor had made him think, and wasn’t critical thought the most evil thing there was? It certainly didn’t help the humans get anywhere happy. But something Eleanor had said resonated with him. “Maybe it’s not about going to the _actual_ Good Place. Maybe it’s about making my own little Good Place, deep inside…”

“Oh!” Trevor grinned evilly. “Deep inside, eh? Didn’t know you were into anal…”

“You’ll never be like Eleanor!” Michael found himself saying.

“Thank Satan. She’s a looooser!” Trevor laughed. “She has ingrown hairs all around…” he waved his crotch. “It’s all red bumps just waiting to get infected if she doesn’t dig them out with the tweezers just right.”

“She wants to get better. You don’t.” It was suddenly, shockingly clear to Michael. It had been right in his face the whole time, hadn't it? Eleanor had spent her life torturing those she thought lesser, like Trevor did, but she had spent her death distancing herself from that. She wanted to change. She didn’t just want to _be_ in the Good Place – she wanted to _belong_ there. She wasn't a Trevor, she was... she was something different. Something unique. She was an _Eleanor_. And if it took Michael getting punished by the Bad Place – getting _retired_ – so be it. Eleanor would be somewhere better.

“Nope.” Trevor grinned. “Because I’m not a loser, twerp!”


	4. Chapter 4

It might be both the best and the worst thing Michael had ever done. Fitting, wasn't it? It nicely captured that paradoxical nature of humans, that unpredictability that used to annoy Michael so much, but that he now found - a little delightful, perhaps? Their ability to wreak the worst evil and the greatest good, a full demon and a full angel in every body, both natures fighting each other to see which would emerge victorious. And which was it now? Was it the evil of letting Chidi remember every torture he had ever endured at Michael's hands, millennia of pure psychological pain custom-tailored to him? Or was it the good of letting him remember every time he subverted it, every time he triumphed - and remember every time he fell in love with Eleanor, forgot, and fell in love again, over and over?

The love that made them strive to be better, that made a little Good Place that went around with them wherever they went, like a Janet's void. That desire was so special, so unique to humans - how had he missed this for so long? Perhaps because it was nothing a demon could experience - that caring, that selflessness, that motivation to do good that had nothing to do with a reward at the end. Just... to do good.

Well, there was no way of knowing, after all. This, too, was something delightfully human for Michael to briefly dip his toe into - taking that leap into uncertainty. Give Chidi back all of it, the horrific and the ecstatic. See what he did with it. No matter what, it would be fun!

With a snap, it was done.


End file.
